


Songs Out of Emptiness

by harlequindreaming (armydoctor)



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: AU, Angst, Established Relationship, Greek Mythology - Freeform, M/M, Magical Realism, violin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-01
Updated: 2012-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-10 20:15:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/470230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/armydoctor/pseuds/harlequindreaming
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In Ancient Greece, a man named Orpheus played for the Lord of the Underworld to try and win his love back from the clutches of Death. In present time, John Watson dies, and Sherlock Holmes finds a new way to use his violin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Songs Out of Emptiness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [armydoctor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/armydoctor/gifts).



> The premise of the fic is the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. In the story, Eurydice dies, and Orpheus descends into the Underworld to try and win her back with his music. He succeeds, but Hades warns him that until they both reach the mortal world, Orpheus must not look back at Eurydice, not even once. When Orpheus reaches the gates to the mortal world, he glances back in joy, only to find that Eurydice has not yet crossed the threshold. She disappears and Orpheus laments until he dies, and joins her in the Elysian fields.
> 
> Blanket disclaimer: I own nothing of BBC Sherlock, nor Greek mythology.
> 
> Thanks to armydoctor (also on Ao3 and the person I share this account with) for beta-ing the fic and basically telling me it was sad as fuck and fuck you and I am apparently a ho.

**xxxxxxxxxx**

 

When John Watson dies, Sherlock Holmes is very quiet.

In televisions and in books, the shattering of a heart is always a loud affair, one with tears and fists in hair and possibly even screams. It involves alcohol, sometimes drugs, and long amounts of time spent in bed, crying out what is left of your heart. There are many phone calls or complete isolation. It is a chaos of emotions, a hurricane, as if the heart is being pulled from every direction and all you can do is scream.

In reality, as Sherlock discovers, when the heart shatters it is not loud. Rather, it is simply the soft splintering of your soul as your whole being comes undone, leaving you with nothing but simple emptiness. Your heart quietly, secretly implodes, leaving you with nothing but a void. It all happens in terrifying silence.

When John Watson dies, the only noises in the hospital room are the flatlining of the heart monitor and the whisper of the doctor’s voice as she states the DNR and calls the ToD. John Watson dies, and Sherlock is quiet.

Despite John’s last words, Sherlock can only blame himself.

 

**xxxxxxxxxx**

**  
**

After John Watson dies, Sherlock Holmes is still quiet.

Nothing gets him to speak. Lestrade valiantly tries to bring him a few cases, but Sherlock merely ignores him. Mrs. Hudson fusses and natters about, but Sherlock merely tunes her out. Mycroft shows up to suggest Sherlock move out or at least put away John’s things, and this earns him such a look that it shakes the British Government’s steely, imperturbable composure. He never mentions the options again.

He never mentions it, but Sherlock is rather grateful to Molly when she visits, because at least she is – for the first time since they have met – quiet. It is as if, after months of trying to chat him up and make small talk, she has been emptied of things to say. They sit together in the silence of the flat, Sherlock curled up in John’s bed and Molly on his desk chair, and stare at nothing in particular. Sherlock blinks his goodbye when she leaves.

For the longest time Sherlock is unable to do anything except drink the odd cup of tea, nibble the occasional takeout meal brought by Mrs. Hudson, and clutch at John’s wooly oatmeal jumper while curled up in his bed. He wastes away slowly, in mind and body. Idly he wonders if a tongue can wither from lack of use, and thinks that, well, here is the perfect way to test the hypothesis. He doesn’t feel like he can ever speak again.

Sherlock had told John, once, that the frailty of genius is that it needs an audience. Genius wants recognition, wishes to perform, to dazzle and astound. Sherlock had found no more willing or eager audience than John, who never ceased to be amazed by Sherlock’s feats of brilliance. Every deduction Sherlock had rattled off, every observation he had made, every theory he had expounded, had brought up that delighted and admiring gaze to John’s face. Sometimes, admittedly, Sherlock would work with more flourish and theatrics, if only for John.

Now, in the darkness of the flat, alone on John’s bed, Sherlock discovers just how frail his genius is.

 

**xxxxxxxxxx**

**  
**

The problem with having saved everything about John in his mind palace, Sherlock finds, is that now, John is not so easily deleted.

He has spent so much time storing John so carefully into his synapses that finding a way to erase him is impossible. He tries because he thinks he would not be so frail if he could forget. But he cannot, he cannot delete John, not one tiny bit of him, cannot reformat his hard drive to contain nothing about the man. And so Sherlock is reminded of his frailty every day, because he remembers.

He remembers how John looks in the mornings: rumpled, smiling blearily, sleep-crusts in the crinkles of his eyes as he laughs his good morning. He remembers how John smells: tea and baking bread and the faintest hint of hospital (it had not been so faint in those last hours, no; in that time, all of John smelled of hospital and copper and Sherlock’s worst fears and there was no trace of tea, none at all). He remembers how John feels when Sherlock is wrapped around him like a tall, gangly octopus, and when Sherlock is lying in John’s lap with fingers carding through his hair. He remembers John’s lips sometimes taste of mint.

He remembers the first time they kissed, exhilarated and panting, in the depths of an abandoned heroin warehouse. He remembers their awkward dance around each other afterward, until Sherlock had given in and thwacked John’s book aside and plopped onto his lap like some sort of overgrown, sulking cat. He remembers the first time John took him to bed and how he hadn’t seemed surprised at all that Sherlock knew all the tricks. He remembers reducing John to a quivering mess with his lips, remembers John touching him until all his skin felt electric, remembers what it feels to have John buried inside him, thrusting slow and dirty, easing Sherlock into orgasm until all Sherlock can stutter is the first postalveolar syllable of John’s name. He remembers the last time John had taken him, rough and hard against the headboard, yanking Sherlock’s hair back as he howled his release.

Sherlock slowly curls away from the headboard. He’s never known memory storage to hurt this deeply.

The jumper no longer smells of John, so Sherlock gets up to root in the laundry pile at the bottom of John’s closet for another. He opens the closet and nearly drops to his knees. There, tucked into the back behind a heap of socks and John’s rain jacket, is a long, slim package, with Sherlock’s name on a card in John’s messy doctor’s scrawl. Ready for his birthday, long months gone by; a birthday John had missed.

With shaking fingers Sherlock picks it up and unwraps it. The _shick_ of tearing paper nearly deafens him after so long only hearing the sound of his own breathing.

It is a violin bow.

It’s not an expensive one, by any count, not the Italian or French bows Sherlock’s always used over the years. It isn’t made from luxurious, cured and oiled wood, nor strung with the finest, beeswax-coated hairs. It is simple and functional and lovingly though inexpertly polished, and it is the best John can afford. So says the note.

_(The middle of the Leslie Quentin murder case, over thirty-six hours of no sleep, Sherlock playing the violin at four in the morning to help him think and forgetting for the moment that John was trying to nap in the kitchen, John storming over and yanking the bow away, yelling at Sherlock to stuff it because it’s driving him up the wall, not noticing that as he’d swiped the bow away he’d cracked it against the corner of the desk until he catches the aghast expression on Sherlock’s face–)_

Sherlock waits for the grief to well up, the noise to come. He waits for tears, for sobs, for screams, for the inevitable explosion of emotions he has witnessed at many a crime scene. Instead, the chasm inside of him only seems to widen, dark and bottomless and hushed. Suddenly, Sherlock can no longer take the silence.

For a moment Sherlock buries his face into the old jumper he’d been clutching, trying to catch the last traces of John’s scent in the knitting. Then he shoves it into the laundry pile before him, takes down another one, and shrugs it on. It sits loose on his thin frame, draped awkwardly over him, and in nothing but that and his suit trousers and one sock, Sherlock figures he probably looks more than a little demented. But the jumper warms Sherlock like nothing has since that horrible November evening. He wears it as he patters downstairs to the living room, wears it as he hunts up a box gone dusty with lack of use.

Downstairs, Mrs. Hudson wakes to the very first sound Sherlock has intentionally made in months: a violin concerto in the wee hours before dawn. She laughs until she cries, and then she laughs and cries some more, and in the morning feels like part of the terrible weight on her heart has lifted. Sherlock plays on.

 

**xxxxxxxxxx**

**  
**

Most people think Sherlock grew up with science and criminology books, with mystery novels and texts on biochemistry; it would certainly explain his tendencies today. They would be right, of course, but they would not think that aside from those, Sherlock had been rather fascinated by the religions of ancient cultures. He had wondered at them, at the half-man and half-animal deities, their various powers and functions, and the way they ruined and guided the human world. He had read plenty of Egyptian stories, and looked up the Norse gods, and wrote the names of Japanese spirits on his bedroom wall. And of course, he had delved into Greek mythology. He had learned about the gods and goddesses and their appearances in human lives.

Therefore he is marginally less alarmed than would be expected when _she_ shows up in his living room.

He has been playing for hours, day after day, every tune he has ever coaxed from his fingers, from scales to sonatas, and when these run out, music of his own devising, strings of notes plucked from his brain, from the depths of the emptiness he longed to fill inside of him. He plays what he cannot say in words, because there is no small, stocky ex-army doctor to listen to him speak. He plays as Orpheus incarnate, violin instead of lyre, playing for a Eurydice whose thread had been long cut. He has strung his violin with the threads of his heart.

Persephone watches his fingers dance; sees their redness, their calluses, their weariness and their determination to play on. She hovers in the kitchen, in her dark dress with its dead flowers, and listens to a requiem deeper and far more painful than any man should ever know or bring forth. She feels both human and immortal parts stir inside of her, at this living reminder of a man who had walked the path down to Hades long before, to beg of her to give him his world back.

“Ask it of me, mortal,” she whispers, in a death-cold voice melodious as Sherlock’s music, “and I shall give as I have given, ages and centuries ago, to one who has lost such as you.”

Sherlock draws out the last notes, lets them reverberate in the air, an elegy he was never able to say. He cradles the bow in his palm and looks up at the Queen of the Underworld, resplendent and terrifying in all her inhuman glory. For the first time since John Watson’s death, he speaks.

“ _Give him back_.”

 

**xxxxxxxxxx**

**  
**

Hades is very, very white.

The bones that make the structure are white, the fog that spreads through everything is white, and the eerie glow from the pit of souls is frightening white with tints of sickly green. Unlike Olympus, however, the white is not warm and welcoming. The white of Hades is bleak, barren and daunting to the bone. It is absolutely the lack of color, the lack of everything and of life, and Sherlock in his navy jumper and lone red sock feels rather small.

Hades himself does not look pleased.

“What business does a mortal have in Hades?” he booms out as Sherlock approaches, violin in hand, calmer than a human ought to be when he is in the depths of hell and still breathing. Persephone floats up to her husband, pale hair streaming behind her, the color of clouded sunshine.

“Another Orpheus, lord. He has asked and I have brought him here.”

Hades fixes his omnipotent and piercing gaze on Sherlock, who simply looks back and lets the entirety of his bereavement show on his face. Then Hades turns to Persephone with a weary expression, looking not at all like a ruler of the dead and damned. “This is for his doctor, is it not? Why do you ask for him? He has given his life willingly that you may remain on earth; his thread parted easily as water for a ship.”

In response, Sherlock lifts the violin to his chin and plays the selfsame song Persephone had heard in the emptiness of his flat. In Hades where one only hears the cries of the dead and the roars of Cerberus and the murmur of thread being cut, the music is glorious and raw and anguished. The white of the Underworld turns Sherlock’s skin near translucent, sits stark contrast to his dark curls, and makes the sock in his foot appear lurid like blood, but Sherlock has his eyes closed and sees only John, laughing in the backseat of a taxi, winded and slumped against Sherlock as he tries to catch his breath. John scrabbling at the wall as Sherlock shoves his hand down his trousers and makes him cry out. John curling up around him in bed, protecting him even in his sleep, solid and warm and everything Sherlock had ever wanted but hadn’t thought he’d deserved.

Persephone kneels at her husband’s feet and listens. Hades watches, impassive, and feels his ichor stir as he remembers, like his wife does, a pitiful Grecian man playing a very similar song in these very halls.

When Sherlock finishes, Hades stands, curling robes of smoke sweeping from his shoulders, the bone crown of the Underworld solid at his brow. He gestures wordlessly at Persephone, who sings a clear, heartrending note. There is a whisper of air and suddenly John Watson stands before Sherlock, still in the jacket and jeans he’d been wearing the night he had died, the bloodstain on his abdomen vanished. He shuffles his feet, smiles sheepishly. Sherlock cries out and starts forward, but Hades holds up his hand.

“The same rules, mortal, as when Eurydice was given to Orpheus in the days when we gods freely walked the earth. Not one look, nor touch, nor words from you toward this man until the both of you have crossed the threshold of the Underworld. Break this, and he is lost to you forever, until your own thread be cut and your soul come down to rest with his. Do you understand?” He trains his black eyes on Sherlock, who nods, tight-lipped and trembling. “Now go. He shall be right behind you.”

Sherlock turns and Persephone rises, folds of her gown billowing around her. She catches Sherlock’s hand in both of hers, and her touch is so cold it burns his skin. “Heed my husband’s words, mortal, and have not the fate of Orpheus the Greek. Even the slightest glimpse will revoke this gift, and John Watson will remain here forever.” She lets him go with a last look, and drifts back to her throne. Sherlock closes his eyes as a shiver of foreboding runs down his spine, and walks from the Halls of Hades without looking back.

The path to the upper world is long and winding, the cobblestones uneven under Sherlock’s feet. It is eerily reminiscent of the path Sherlock and John had taken, many months ago, on an evening where Sherlock had been unable to sleep and his restlessness had woken John up.

_(Dressing each other carefully, John winding the scarf around Sherlock’s neck as if they both were things precious and breakable, both of them walking out into the chilly London night; meandering through the park as Sherlock tells John about growing up in Avignon, about wanting to be a pirate and pilot and aeronautical engineer; the stones of the path covered in leaves, John jumping and crunching every last one he can get at just to make Sherlock laugh–)_

But for Sherlock’s footsteps and labored breathing, all is silent.

Sherlock tries not to think that when they finally reach the Upperworld, his life will no longer be silent.

The temptation to look back, to reach behind him and touch John, is greater than any for cigarettes or drugs that he has ever experienced. This is craving, this is sheer _need_ , because Sherlock has so long gone without and John is _right there_ behind – the thought arrests Sherlock’s steps.

Is he?

He cannot hear John, cannot sense him. He can only trust that Hades is good on his word and John is following behind. None of his senses tell him that there is someone behind him, only a few steps away; nothing tells him that John is really and truly _there._

_(Sherlock had told John, once, back in Dartmoor, in front of a fire with his hands shaking and his eyes wild, that he’d only ever been able to trust the evidence of his own eyes–)_

The gate is close. Hades and Persephone are long gone. Surely – surely he can look? Surely he can check, just this one time, just to make sure, because John has always, _always_ followed Sherlock wherever he went, with no hesitations and no doubts in mind; John was always just a few steps behind. But when they were both living, Sherlock could always turn and look.

Just one little look.

 _Have not the fate of Orpheus,_ Persephone had said.

But Sherlock needs to _see._

_John has always followed._

But that one night John hadn’t followed because he’d been on his knees in a dark and filthy alleyway trying to force his blood back into his body, Sherlock’s name a horrible gurgle from his throat.

_He shall be right behind you._

But Sherlock has gone so many long, agonizing days without.

Just one little look.

Just one.

Almost there. The gate is close.

Just _one._

_The evidence of his own eyes–_

His grip tightens on the violin and Sherlock barely, slightly, almost imperceptibly, turns his head.

Their eyes meet and in John’s depthless brown Sherlock reads that he has condemned himself to his own personal hell, because for the second time he will lose John and it is once again all his fault.

The last Sherlock sees of John is of him reaching forward, mouth open as if to say something, growing more and more faded with every excruciating heartbeat. Sherlock starts forward, desperate for just one touch, just _one_ , one more brush of his skin against John’s, but he barely lifts his foot and John is gone.

Sherlock’s hand closes on empty air.

The violin clatters to the ground.

He grips the bow so tight it feels as if it might cut into his palm.

John is gone.

All at once Sherlock is back at Baker Street, standing in the living room, John’s jumper slipping off one shoulder. There is the faintest trace of lilies and incense in the air: the smells of a funeral, of the dead.

Sherlock drops to his knees and with a scream wrenched from the chasm in his soul, finally breaks the silence.

Down in Hades, in the Elysian Fields, John thinks he hears the soft notes of a violin.


End file.
